How a modern Olympic Games could work for SA

The late-2025 cabinet announcement that South Africa would begin formal dialogue with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for the 2036 or 2040 Olympic Games marks an important moment in South Africa’s pursuit of major events.

Three decades after Cape Town’s bid for the 2004 Games (lost to Athens), the bidding process, the hosting model and the Games’ global appeal have shifted.

Past bidding cycles were often characterised by cities competing to create new Olympic parks, building shiny new stadiums and arenas, and embarking on expensive international marketing campaigns.

Along came the much-needed IOC reforms, Agenda 2020 and 2020+5, which encourage the use of existing venues, open up regional and national hosting, and prioritise sustainability, community benefit and alignment with national development plans. The IOC’s philosophy is clear: “Hosts are not required to adapt to the Games; the Games must adapt to the hosts.”

For South Africa, the opportunity this presents is a co-ordinated national project that accelerates long-term priorities already on the table and plans and frameworks that need dusting off.

Over the past three years, the Cape Town 2040 think tank has explored this question in the context of the city region and the Western Cape.

A 2024 audit of potential venues found that about 80% of the competition venues required for a future Games could be met through existing venues or temporary venues, forming a credible foundation for a future Games project. It comprises stadiums from the 2010 Fifa World Cup, university sports precincts, municipal facilities and some of Cape Town’s iconic spaces suitable for temporary overlays.

Our learning mission to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and our report on its insights, showed how a creative approach adds value by using public assets and spaces, where streets, rivers, historic squares and buildings hosted sports and ceremonies.

The reforms also enable hosts to adopt a “best in country” approach, using the best facilities in a country, as Paris 2024 did for shooting and by hosting surfing as far away as Tahiti. For South Africa, this could mean hosting surfing at Jeffreys Bay, using Soccer City and other 2010 legacy venues for football, and also the possibility of including Southern African countries for football preliminaries. More locally, Stellenbosch, the Winelands and other sites within the province could be used and celebrated where facilities and conditions are already in place. For example, Brisbane 2032 will be co-hosted with the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast, each 60km-90km from Brisbane.

Further to this, the IOC asks aspiring hosts to consider where they believe their investment should be directed. For South Africa, this is clearly a housing and transport Olympics.

It also reflects Cape Town’s demographic reality. The Cape Town city region is projected to grow from about 4.8-million people today to more than 6-million by the early 2040s, placing sustained pressure on transport, housing and services.

The CT2040 Preliminary Accommodation Assessment found that meeting the IOC requirement of 41,000 hotel rooms could trigger 10,000-12,000 new permanent homes in affordable, social, student and market housing to house the media and Games family, rather than building new hotels. This could also dent a national housing backlog now estimated at 2.3-million units, with nearly 688,000 in the Western Cape alone. Put differently: we would need four Olympics a year for 20 years just to catch up.

Our learning mission to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and our report on its insights, showed how a creative approach adds value by using public assets and spaces, where streets, rivers, historic squares and buildings hosted sports and ceremonies. Where Paris could draw on the Grand Palais and Seine river, Cape Town and South Africa’s dramatic and telly friendly mountains, oceans and gardens can provide equally compelling backdrops.

An Olympic timeline could also spark the political will and urgency to finally unlock transport projects that have sat in “feasibility” for decades.

In Cape Town, two examples are plain, both dating back more than 30 years. The Blue Downs Rail Link, a short north-south rail link connecting Khayelitsha to Bellville, and the Klipfontein Corridor are both priorities within the city’s Integrated Provincial Transport Network (IPTN).

Rail would be the critical spine of a successful Games, as it is and should be for the people of South Africa, and the lifeblood of an urban economy. Transport minister Barbara Creecy’s ambition of 600-million annual passenger journeys by 2030 would be a strong target alongside a future bid. With plans to refresh signalling, the new Alstom trains would be able to run at 90km/h to 120km/h, a step change that would support a more regional Games and expand access across the city region long after the closing ceremony.

Investment in transport and housing infrastructure will enormously improve the lives of Capetonians and so too will the resultant job creation. While the latest indicators and well-received budget suggest that our economy has turned a corner and is now heading in the right direction, a consistent problem in South Africa remains jobless growth and persistent unemployment.

The construction boom that preceded South Africa’s 2010 World Cup was an enormous generator of jobs, directly in construction, as well as indirectly in support services and tourism, helping to insulate South Africa from the fallout of the 2008/09 global financial crisis. Sadly, 2010 also marked the start of South Africa’s lost decade in which the failure to capitalise on the gains of the World Cup can be directly linked to a failure of political leadership.

Infrastructure and job creation are tangible gains that can be directly measured, as important are those less tangible gains of image and reputation. It’s hard to quantify the “feel-good” factor generated by 2010, but the successful hosting positioned South Africa firmly on the tourist map. Many visitors surveyed at the time indicated that they would not have come to South Africa were it not for the football and would now come again and encourage family and friends to do the same.

An Olympics will do the same and more. Hosting an Olympic Games brings a certain stature and credibility — given the organisational, financing and management challenges, it has traditionally been seen as the preserve of “serious” countries — that will deliver political and financial benefit over the long term.

Similarly hard to measure is the social development that a well-managed Games will deliver. Previous Games have seen enormous growth in the host country’s sporting prowess, as a generation of young people engage more strongly in sport and are facilitated in doing so. This may sound unimportant, but the positive impact of sports in impoverished communities should not be underestimated — generating hope and confidence in young people, as well as organisational and management skills, and creating a path away from poverty, drugs and gangsterism. South Africans have an extraordinary ability to come together in pursuit of a common goal — hosting an Olympics will give us one.

The biggest criticism levelled at the Olympics is always the cost. Much of the literature on Olympic hosting revolves on the knotty question of whether hosting the Games is profitable or loss-making for the host city, as well as issues of affordability. While hugely escalating costs have been a major concern for many host cities in the past, the debate over whether the Games is profitable has involved creative accounting on both sides. It must be acknowledged that this is a costly exercise.

However, much of the funding that goes into hosting the Games is ploughed into the delivery of infrastructure. An obsession with the image of the Games will lead to substantial overexpenditure, but the new emphasis on sustainability, community benefit and national development plans enables expenditure to be carefully managed and deliberately targeted to deliver the widest good.

As South Africa enters the “continuous dialogue” phase with the IOC, there is an opportunity to shape a vision that is more responsible, inclusive and sustainable, with an unmistakable South African flavour.

The reformed Olympic model offers a canvas, but we must decide how to use it. If approached with creativity and centred on local needs, South Africa could shape a Games that strengthens cities, towns, regions and the country.

The most important question is not whether South Africa is technically capable of hosting. It is whether the country can design a Games that strengthens its core development priorities. This is the fundamental question we need to ask ourselves and which the IOC will ask of us.

• Fataar is CEO of Our Future Cities and co-convenor of Cape Town 2040 with Briggs, a partner at dhk Architects.